Dr. Who – Under the Lake

Right lets get started, shall we? I’m not too sure what it is with the Doctor and monsters related to water – I mean it’s almost like he’s TRYING to scare us isn’t it! 🙂 Let’s be honest – this episode and its partner while not as frightening as the David Tennant helmed Waters of Mars was still enough to send my kids scurrying upstairs leaving me all alone in the dark. However the ghosts were not what they seemed so without further ado – lets get into the recap.

When the Doctor and Clara bland on yet another seemingly deserted station they don’t really realize that they are trapped underwater. Exploring they come across a derelict and seemingly far advanced spaceship which has some strange writing on the inside that the TARDIS translation engine is unable to read. After the Doctor and Clara both look at it – and it seemingly gets imprinted on their eyes – they continue their investigations of the station. Almost immediately they come across a ghost – something that the Doctor does not believe should exist. When they find the remainder of the crew they explain that the ghost is actually their old commander who was killed, seemingly randomly by the derelict spaceship while they were investigating it.

The Doctor – as mentioned previously – refuses to believe in the existence of the ghost stating that in all of his travels he has never yet come across such entities however as more and more facts seemingly lineup he is forced to agree with this despite his earlier arguments to the contrary. Realizing that the only way they can stay alive is by trapping the ghosts they come up with a plan to get them into a faraday cage where they will be unable to escape.

Managing to trap the ghosts the Doctor and Clara get separated when the emergency protocols activate on the station flooding the hallways with seawater to shutdown an overheating reactor. The Doctor realizes the only way he can figure out what is really going on, is to travel back in time to when the ship itself was discovered Before the Flood (see what I did there?)

Telling Clara that he will come back for her, the Doctor departs in the TARDIS however shortly thereafter Clara sees a new ghost floating outside the window – this time it’s the Doctor.

Thoughts

Not one of the best episodes I’ll be honest. There were some elements that were interesting but the ship itself was just too cardboard and didn’t have any realism. While I know that Doctor Who is not necessarily about the special-effects they generally seem to at least make an effort and in this case I felt that they hadn’t bothered.

Clara herself however seems to really be making an effort perhaps too large of a one has she seems to be setting herself up for failure. While I know that Clara is leaving the way she’s been acting almost makes me wish she was gone already as more and more it seems that the Doctor is her companion versus the other way around. While Clara has never been my favorite companion, I’ve not actively disliked one and unfortunately that is very much the way I’m starting to feel about her now. I know – I’m probably just setting myself up here as I’m sure that they’re writing her this way for a specific reason and she’ll turn out to be some god or something that has to sacrifice herself to save the universe, but right now … I don’t like her!

The ghost themselves are interesting I guess, and having them able to manipulate physical objects was a nice twist and something that I was not initially expecting. The timing of this episode was extra good in terms of real life events of course as it was only recently reported that water had been discovered on Mars which tied back to the excellent Waters of Mars episode and had a good correlation to this one.

I'm a geek! I love all things SciFi and Fantasy and have done since I first read LOTR as a kid. Escapism to fantastic worlds filled with weird and wonderful creatures initially for me was via books and comics, but with the recent surge in popularity of this fare in film and television also - I'm in a state of bliss! As the editor of Zone Six, I've been lucky to meet some other awesome authors and writers that share this love and passion. The great Ray Bradbury said - "Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will .. it will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again."

[…] and continuations and this episode is no exception. Continuing on from the less than excellent Under the Lake, we’ve got part two – Before the Flood. Now this one has some definite elements that […]